ABSTRACT
Any approach to race relations based on social Darwinism was bound to have major weaknesses. It had to emphasize organic evolution, to deal in speculative terms with long-term trends, and could cast little light upon superorganic or socio-cultural evolution within which the major historical events would have to be located. A viable sociological alternative to such an approach first begins to appear in the work of Robert Park. Born in Pennsylvania, Park studied in the United States, and then in Germany, being deeply influenced by the teaching of Georg Simmel at Berlin and later writing a doctoral thesis entitled Masse und Publikum under Windelbands direction at Heidelberg. The direction of Park’s personal interests may explain his description of William Graham Sumner’s Folkways as ‘the most subtle analysis and suggestive statement about human nature and social relations that has yet been written in English’.
